work and play

well lets see, I wrote on Thursday; what have I done since....
I'm fairly certain somewhere in the mis shopping was involved but that is a fairly regular occurance as the nearest shopping centre is but 5 minutes walk away (in fact there are 3, and a shopping street)
I have been working hard since though. Jeanette has been ill this week so I picked up her lessons on Saturday morning and the K2 english teacher left so I subbed her lesson on Friday. We picked up our first tutoring session on Friday evening. Izzie taught 2 P3 boys and I took the two K3 girls. 7.30 -9.00 so we were working late, and Friday is already my most hectic day. After this we celebrated the arrival of Koen (another intern placed up north who came down for May holiday) bygoing out to a cocktail bar. That was rather nice as there were a large amount of us. This guy came over who was obviously happy to see so many non-chinese people, imtroduced himself, sat with us and insited on buying a bottle of whisky to share. Izzie and I did not stay too late or drink too much as we both had lessons in the morning. I started at 8.30am I'm hardcore you see! We finished this, had lunch and did the weekly shop (something about saying I do that makes me feel old) before returning to plan our next set of lessons.
We took some lessons at a nearby middle school. They had rung the school to ask for us. 2 hours, extra pay, why not! We arrived at the school and propmptly got lost, having no clue where to go or who to ask so we wandered before sitting oursleves in an empty classroom to finish the final touches to our lesson plan. That is until a student wlaked in and asked what we were doing at her school. They don't have foreign teachers there. We spotted another nom-chinese person and went over to harass him for answers. Turned out he was also taking a class that afternoon. Although older, the level of english was equivilant to our P5 class. All this extra work earned me 600kuai. Considering I get paid 2000kuai a month, it was pretty good going! We decided another nightout was the best solution and went to a bar with the teacher, Angel, that we metatthe middle school. It was a good night but as per usual, we were soon surrounded by chinese men all wanting to say helolo and dance with us and no matter how many times we told them we didn't speak chinese, they continued to talk to us, IN CHINESE! It didn't tar our night though and we rounded it off by walking home in the rain through a building site and climbing over ther gate. We have worked out where to climb the gate so that we don't get caught on CCTV.
We met up with Aviva yesterday and went for a lovely massage. I'm going to miss my cheap massages when I come home.
Daddy is now in China, which seems a little odd, because he's in teh same country and I don't get to see him! He is sending some things my way and I will at some point soon be sending things home.
I've been thinking about the travelling I shall be doing after my contract is up. This lead to drawing up a budget so I know how much money I will have, working out a daily allowance and and draft itinary. And people say I'm not organised! I am very much looking forward to travelling. I plan to ride an elephant! It's all very exciting. As is our forthcoming trip to Yangshuo (we have the train tickets booked so we WILL make it this time) We're going rock climbing!!

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poser

The school cancelled my one lesson on Tuesday morning. The reason for this being that instead, we were to have our photographs taken with each of the kindergarten classes. Perhaps you are imagining school photos with benches and straight lines but these were not like that. They would point at a class (as they were all in the playground) and that was it. As a result we played with the students, chased them, tickled them, ran away and all sorts of childish things. Occasionally they would hand us a book and ask us to pretend to be teaching english but this turned into a roaring competition (the page was about big cats) We were still outside when the students began traipsing out for morning exercise. Having watched this many times amused (I'm taking a video one day) we grabbed 2 teachers by the hand (ones we talk to naturally) dragged them onto the field and forced them to teach us, much to the delight of the nearby students. All of the running around and exercise meant that I was turning a lovely shade of red but the morning wasn;t over yet. We had to pretend to teach an IT lesson. I resided under the fan for most of this and moved only to pose for as few seconds. Following this I walked past my kindergarten class, the lesson I was supposed to have, who rushed to the window [and of this I do have a wonderful video] shouting "We like Seona, beautiful!" I love those children. We moved onto the nursery. Being the child that I am I hadmy picture taken taking childen down the slide (I was a bit big for it) and sat on a toy aeroplane (much too big for it) It was a fun morning.
Tuesday night we were taken out for dinner. The aim of ths was to test ou mandarin as we were ordering the meal. I'm proud to announce that we passed, and no-one went hungry! It was a nice meal actually with 3 of the teachers, we had a laugh =) I bought myself a mosquito net. As much as I can cope with the bites, there are poisonous ones around (Izzie got bitten by one, she found out first hand) To put any worrying minds at ease, no not maleria which is very uncommon in these parts, so we are told.
Yes, I am extremely happy at the moment.

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What happened to special treatment??

This weekend has been fairly uneventful. On Friday night we chose to have dinner at Pizza Hut, which proved not to be the best choice ever made. We waited an age to order, even longer for the food and the drinks were the last thing to arrive. Whatever happened to getting special treatment thanks to my pale skin?? This countrys gone downhill  We ran into a student too.
After this debacle, shall we call it it, we ambled around the nearby shopping centre.

My lessons on Saturday morning went surprisingly quickly, a good thing to be sure as I hadn't been certain I had planned enough to fill the lesson.  It was raining cats and dogs for the rest of the day. However, we still ventured outside to go to the post office and to do our weekly shop. I also got my haircut. It's acceptable though I was showing him where to put the scissors! This took up most of the day and when I returned it was early evening. We settled to dinner and 4 episodes of Heroes. I said I was addicted!!

My intentions to go to church yesterday were thwarted my my body's overwhelming desire to sleep through my alarm. I then felt restless for the rest of the day. My parcel from Mum arrived though and I set about reading the bible notes immediately. Marina, another teacher, took my old bed off my hands. She was complaining about her bed being too squeaky and asked if she could have it. If she's happy with it, why not? I certainly don't want to keep it! Later that day I convinced Izzie to finally get dressed and we went for a wander. we explored the markets, which unbelievably, we hadn't yet done. It was nice. I bought myself a Michael Jackson CD because it never fails to cheer me up, what a legend he is (musically speaking) We came back and watched a film about Michael collins, an Irish historical figure. Izzie's Irish pride was found annoying by some at UIBE thus alienating her somewhat. It was out in true form last night. It's easy to see why it could be found irritating but I was more bothered that I was being made to watch a very dull film. Today has been going slowly. I don't know whether thatis because a ravenous mosquito kept me awake last night or because I still have a list of things I want to get done; such as booking train tickets. I need a travel agent.

Looking like a crazy lady

The weeks seem to go so fast, before I know it it's Thursday and I'm off to HuangQi again. The phonecall that I instructed my family to make on Sunday came just as I was falling asleep on Monday evening. Despite telling Daddy to ring again on Tuesday, he didn't. Phht.
I couldn't actually sleep on Tuesday night, not straight away anyway so I went outside and lay down on the grass and looked at the stars whilst listening to my MP3. Most relaxing, but should anyone had seen I may have looked more than a little odd singing to myself. That was the day when we brandished our cameras in the corridors to capture our little darlings. Mostly P1 as we were outside their classrooms but a few kindergarteners too.
It has been a little cooler this week but it's warming up again, so my summer teaching wardrobe will need to be expanded, which involves going shopping.
The school wants to test our Mandarin to see how much we have learnt. The fact that we are learning how to get by means that our test, as it were, will take place in a restaurant, and we will have to order the meal for ourself and 2 teachers. They won't get a choice about the food because it will be whatever we can order! That's next week so there could be some cramming on foods before then!
I got thrown into the baby class at HuangQi this morning. I'm not sure why. They are 2/3. They didn't cry at all and they were very happy little ones. I also named a little girl. She was new at the kindergarten. I may have upset Izzie a little this morning because I took the flashcards she had wanted and she didn't check they were there until a few minutes before her class and had to wing it slightly. She does that most lessons anyway, her planning can be extremely last minute on occasion, if it works for her though, why complain.

Introducing...Idiot!

If I could recall Friday evening, I would share the delightful story but, as it happens, I have no idea what we did. I therefore conclude that I did nothing exciting and have nothing of interest to tell! Saturday, I made a half-baked plan to go visit a temple in Foshan but it was raining so I didn't. Instead, we went to Walmart as per usual and bought some more DVD's. I went for some series this time, thinking they might last longer. This was followed up by spending the aftrenoon cleaning. I lead an exciting life I know. Actually, I think we went shopping Friday night, andt he shop assistant told me my chinese was very good because I bargained in Mandarin. Success! =] A group of us went round to Jamie and Andreas' apartment on Saturday night. Natasha had come up from Zhongshan as well so it was nice to see lots of people, it's been a while since I saw some of them. It was an interesting night shall we say, any Holy Cross students will be pleased to know that I have introduced these people to the game of Idiot, a tremendous game which was very popular! Yes, quite a night. Something I learnt: never let me try and open a bottle of wine when I don't have a corkscrew, it's not normally a good idea with a corkscrew, anyway, it does not have good results. Champagne is another matter altogether.
Yesterday was an incredibly lazy day. I spent the morning drifting through a few episodes of Sex and The City before wondering where on earth Izzie was. Turns out she had stayedover at Ali's and they were sat in a cafe. So I got on a motorbike and headed in their direction only the driver got lost. HE drove around for a bit but in the end a waitress from the cafe had to come and find me. Not that I knew that until he showed up. Honestly. After that, Izzie and Antoinette went for a manicure whilst Ali and I joined Aaron in the flat and watched Transformers. Later we had takeaway pizza which was covered in mushrooms because plain is far too much to ask of the Chinese. We went home around 7.30 but I was shattered despite doing nothing all day so I went to bed pretty early, after watching some Gilmore Girls. My mother will be happy to know that I bought all 6 series so she can watch it as much as she wants!
I feel like I should be tired today as well but I'm not, a little stiff, but good.
I had a lovely lesson with K3B, I'm rather attached to that class now, though I'm quite certain there were a few new faces and some familiar ones missing =(

Here for a reason

Well, it had to happen eventually, yes this morning I was late. Somewhere in my brain, I thought 8am was actually 7am and it took me 20 minutes to realise actually, no it isn't. I should get docked my day's pay for that but since the only thing I missed was greeting and car door opening, that would be highly unfair. Maybe no-one noticed. I didn't clock in anyway.

I hid myself in my room last night watching Cars and Jonny English, which remind me of Emma and Katie respectively. That may have something to do with Emma quoting "my name's Mata, like towmata without the terr" and "she only wants me for my body" and Katie being in absolute hysterics throughout Jonny English. Bless my family. I wonder when my dad is coming over, I was told it was quite soon, so I get to see my Daddy! I had a deep thinking session last night as well, pondering why I came to China, what I'll get out of it, what I'm missing back home etc. It started out because I was feeling a little homesick and I was thinking about what was stopping me coming home. By the end of my train of thought, I felt much better about things, which seems strange but I'd reaffirmed that I wasn't just here for the kicks, God placed me here, which is incredibly reassuring. I know that as often as I might contemplate giving up and coming home, I won't, not until it's time. Everyone has moments when they are feeling weak, but there are plenty of things and people keeping me strong.

It's raining today. It gets rid of some of the humidity, so I'm much happier today, much more comfortable.
I love my K3B class, I have them 4 days a week. Their class teacher sat through my lesson today (there normally is another teacher or assistant around in case they start running up the walls) She was taking lots of pictures of the activities and of me working with the children. At the end she told me to choose 2 good students and we had to pose for photos. Maybe there was a purpose to it. That's a Chinese thing, saying maybe a lot. I hope I don't too much. Maybe and actually. You hear those a lot.
Yes today, I'm much happier, much more peaceful and content =)

Sometimes just sometimes

This week has continued to be hot humid and therefore sticky. It is not that nice but I have been told that it is only this humid in April and as of next month it should be a dry heat, with which I can cope.

I'm not quite sure how I'm feeling at the moment. Since Ali asked whether Izzie and I had fallen out yet and Aaron pointed out that I've seen her everyday for the past 3 months, little things she does have started to annoy me. It's not much. We always split the food shopping equally and generally, it ends up in her room so I don't actually eat most of it yet she still eats my food. She repeats almost everything I say to the chinese people as though it would be impossible for them to understand when I said it. She has started complaining about the canteen food, refusing to eat there because she doesn't like the meat. I pointed out to her that I don't like it either, simply eat around it and don't complain. Her response was "but that's self-inflicted". Her reason for not wanting to eat the meat is exactly the same as why I don't: we don't like it.  Perhaps, doing something separately this weekend would be a good idea.

Our mandarin lesson yesterday seemed to amuse the straggling students wandering in and out of the office, i'm not sure why, maybe it was because we were learning the names of vegetables we have never seen before or maybe it was our pronunciation, the massacre of their language which was being performed by us.  Who knows?

munchies

Isobel and I should probably learn that whenever we intend to travel, things will not go according to plan. Indeed, as Hong Kong was not as planned, neither was Guilin/Yangshuo. Thursday was always going to be a bit of a rush. Izzie had to dash off to the supermarket leaving me to make dinner. Unfortunately, all of the food was locked in her room. An hour passed and I went to see if she had returned yet. I found myself distracted by some P6ers with whom I sat chatting and learning Chinese characters for half an hour. It was shortly before the time we were due to leave that I realized this and ran back to my room and collected my things, just as she appears, just returning. She hadn’t packed yet either. I threw some things into a bag for her and told her to get her backside into gear. For once it wasn’t me making people late! It took almost as long to hail a taxi but we need not have worried about being late to meet Ali who was at a different bus station. We agreed to meet at the train station in Guangzhou. After arriving at an extremely busy station, crammed with people claiming spot to spend the night waiting and long, snaking queues, we were told that there were no trains to Guilin that day and no tickets for the following. Fantastic. We agreed to find somewhere to spend the night and get a bus early in the morning. Our simple plan did not work out. Neither I nor Isobel had our passports and thus were not allowed to stay. Ali, however, booked herself in and we left most of things there and went to get a bite to eat. We took a late taxi home, collected our passports and came back the next morning, by which time we had realized that our original destination was now out of the question. Despite this the weekend was not entirely fruitless. We took the opportunity to look round Guangzhou which we may not have done otherwise with it’s close proximity to Nanhai. We saw Sun Yat Sen’s memorial hall and a garden with his memorial obelisk on top of a hill of all things. Due to the heat/stickiness/humidity, this was more than enough and we retired to Lucy’s, a western café near our hostel. We had intended to stay just for afternoon snacks, which turned into dinner and for the other 2, for beer and pudding also. In the meantime, I headed to the hostel to shower and beautify myself before rejoining them. It was here that we met an American couple. We had become intrigued by the number of western couples with Chinese babies. The couple informed us that around the corner was a hotel where those adopting from overseas must reside for 2 weeks. Even they admitted it was a little odd and they felt like they were buying a child.
Some of the other interns were coming to Guangzhou for a night out. Both Izzie and Ali dislike clubs so I stayed with them at a bar before joining the others later. We didn’t make it to the club in the end but stayed in a different bar. It was a good night if you excuse the dramatic or drunken behaviour of those who had drunk more than their share of the Jack Daniel’s. Upon my return to the hostel, a creepy guy was still playing computer games as he had been when I left earlier. It is not what I would consider a constructive way of spending one’s time travelling.
Zoë joined the 3 of us in the morning. We relaxed in starbucks before braving the humidity to visit a temple. I love the temples. They are what one would expect of China. This particular one also had a rather lovely little art gallery at the back. Slowly but surely we built up the energy to make our way home, where we collapsed in front of Heroes; our latest addiction.
Sunday was completely free to use as I pleased. I had intended to thoroughly clean my room as is my usual Sunday habit but the effort was far too great. I contented myself to sit in the park with a book I barely had chance to read. We attracted a friend in the form of a little Chinese girl named Ivy. Though we couldn’t say much, she played with us, sat with us, jabber away in Chinese and was generally entertained. She made the pair of us crowns out of leaves and gave us her teddy. We mistakenly thought she was just showing it to us until she shoved it into my bag.
I did not sleep well Sunday night. In fact, come Monday morning, I was on the brink of declaring myself on strike until I was given a mattress. Fortunately, my objective was fulfilled before I had chance to raise my point and my new bed was delivered before lunch.
The students are lazy and lethargic this week. I do not blame them and have put it down to the weather as I emphasise! I was most grateful of somewhere comfy to sleep last night though I stayed up late to finish reading Harry Potter 7. I’m just that cool. There maws also a rogue mosquito in my room who must have been hungry as so far, I’ve counted 31 bites, 3 on the sole of my foot. Thankfully, the majority does not itch, but they are not pretty!

Disappearing act

I have just spent 1 hour writing an entry, which for some strange reason has vanished and deleted itself without a trace. I am not happy.
I do however have a bed which is both momentous and joyful, at least to me if not to anyone else. Hopefully I shall sleep well tonight and get a decent night's sleep for once. Tomorrow perhaps I shall try again at that lengthy blog entry.

Just because they're not afraid of us

The school neglected to tell us that tomorrow is a festival. We discovered this vital titbit of information by overhearing a conversation. Thus as of yesterday we decided to make a spontaneous plan and are getting on a train tonight to go to Guilin/Yangshuo in the next province. It's supposed to be nice. Some of the other interns went last weekend and there's quite a few heading there this week too. We'll take the place over! I got a bit annoyed with my P6B class this week and made them write lines. I think it was mainy because I don't like the lesson and neither do they. Although they are normally good, they acted up a bit. I felt harsh on them afterwards though. P5A on the other hand, tried to run riot. I've adopted a Hindle technique which involves banging some heavy object down in front of a miscreant student. This came about ever since the helpful insight from one child in that class that they don't behave for us because they are not afraid of us. Not that I want to terrify the students, I still want the lesson to be fun but that involves some level of behaving from them!
We started watching Heroes last night since we bought the box set. Neither of us had seen it before and it's slow to start but strangely and darkly addictive. We ploughed through 4 episodes before stopping ourselves and reminding ourselves of our 1-a-week plan. never gonna last!
I'm going on holiday yeah yeah yeah! For once it's a short one but I'm lacking in inspiration today and well, just a little restless!